Mac Studio M1 Max vs M1 Ultra for Topaz video work

I just purchased Topaz Video AI. I am about to purchase a new Mac Studio, and was wondering about the difference in Topaz Video AI performance on the M1 Max vs. the M1 Ultra. For most of my video work, the Ultra is definitely overkill. But I am planning on running a lot (26) of older 90 - 120 minute documentaries through Topaz to increase resolution from the original SD video. How much of a difference would it make going from the Max’s 10/24/16 cores to the Ultra’S 20/48/32 cores? Thanks for any thoughts.

Hi - as an owner of a Mac Studio M1 Max (10 core CPU, 24 Core GPU) my immediate thought was don’t bother with spending at least twice the money on an M1 Ultra for upscaling SD to HD. I’m extremely disappointed with the performance combination of M1 Macs and upscaling SD. Other users or Topaz might suggest processing several videos in parallel for better performance. However, since version 3.1.x, there is very little, if anything, to be gained on an M1 Mac by parallel processes of SD upscaling. However, in versions 3.0.x (which are still available) there was a significant gain in overall performance when parallel processing SD upscaling. Anyway, keep a lookout for M1/2 SD upscaling in the User Benchmark Results section. You’ll see my Studio’s measly performance for SD input in comparison to HD input (about 25% slower per pixel). This performance penalty for SD appears to be unique to M1 / M2 Macs.

Thanks.

Andy

As a M1 Pro owner, I am disappointed to hear that v3.1.x is a step in the wrong direction. Is there any informed reason as to why that is the case and if any improvements are expected for M1 and M2 owners soon?

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know if VEAI’s processing is somehow aided by the ML cores on the M-Chips?

Just to clarify, there was a significant performance gain for single processes from 3.0.x to 3.1.x (at least 60%). However, SD upscaling is far from being optimised on M1 / M2. I’ve no idea if 3.2.x will address this. One very encouraging sign comes from the results I’ve found when first “stacking” SD videos using ffmpeg vstack (or hstack) to create the higher resolution favoured by TVAI and Apple silicon. For example, if I first stack 6 x 720x576 then upscale, I can get 4.2 fps = 25.2 fps per SD video. The best I can get with just one 720x576 is 16.5 fps. So that’s at least 50% performance gain by stacking SD clips. Perhaps Topaz could do that within TVAI…

Thanks.

Andy

I’m so curious about the Mac Studio Ultra and Video Enhance AI because it has double the neural cores, so it would make it faster? Someone said that with the Ultra Video Enhance AI was faster than a PC with a 3090.

Hello,

Here’s the benchmarks results from my M1 Max:
Version 3.2.2

Topaz Video AI  v3.2.2
System Information
OS: Mac v13.0301
CPU: Apple M1 Max  32 GB
GPU: Apple M1 Max  21.333 GB
Processing Settings: device: 0 vram: 1 instances: 1
Input Resolution: 1920x1080
Benchmark Results
Artemis		1X: 8.46 fps 	2X: 5.47 fps 	4X: 2.20 fps 	
Proteus		1X: 8.31 fps 	2X: 5.33 fps 	4X: 2.06 fps 	
Gaia		1X: 2.56 fps 	2X: 1.92 fps 	4X: 1.45 fps 	
4X Slowmo		Apollo: 7.76 fps 	Chronos: 3.03 fps 	Chronos Fast: 5.20 fps 	

Would be great if someone with a Mac Studio can run the benchmark within the app and post the results would be great.

Cheers.

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Someone on a different forum posted their results from the M1 Ultra and it’s not a huge difference from the M1 Max.

Topaz Video AI v3.2.2
System Information
OS: Mac v13.0301
CPU: Apple M1 Ultra 64 GB
GPU: Apple M1 Ultra 48 GB
Processing Settings: device: 0 vram: 1 instances: 1
Input Resolution: 1920x1080
Benchmark Results
Artemis 1X: 13.02 fps 2X: 7.74 fps 4X: 2.87 fps
Proteus 1X: 12.07 fps 2X: 6.86 fps 4X: 2.37 fps
Gaia 1X: 4.87 fps 2X: 3.16 fps 4X: 2.34 fps
4X Slowmo Apollo: 8.48 fps Chronos: 4.12 fps Chronos Fast: 6.11 fps

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